FELONY NUDITY: PETER PAN

 Our guest author today is the incomparable Lenny Kleinfeld.  If you’re not familiar with Lenny's work you’re missing something really special.  Make that really hysterically special.  Lenny’s first novel, “Shooters And Chasers,” is one of the funniest crime novels I ever read.  His recently completed second, “Some Dead Genius”—the manuscript of which Leighton and I were privileged to read—is the funniest.  As Lenny puts it, the exact date “Some Dead Genius” will be inflicted on the public has yet to be determined. Lenny began his career as a playwright, columnist and freelance writer in Chicago. Then he sold a screenplay. He is currently 27 years into a business trip to Los Angeles.  —Jeff 

In September of 1968 I got back to Madison, Wisconsin a week before the start of classes for my senior year at UW. I called a friend. He wasn't home. I called another friend. Wasn't home. But his roommate said both guys were rehearsing a play, directed by another friend, Stuart Gordon.

So I dropped in. It was at the Play Circle, a 140-seat theater in the Student Union, where, Wednesdays through Sundays, they showed movies. But three or four times a year the Union funded original student plays in that space. You got a $250 budget and three performances: one Monday night, then a matinee and an evening show on Tuesday, after which you had to strike the set so the movie screen could be re-installed.

I walked into what was a typical late-1960s rehearsal; the cast was stoned and doing improvs, riffing on Peter Pan. A short time later so was I. A short time after that I was informed I was in the cast, despite the fact I'm one of the worst actors in the English-speaking world. Stuart, no fool, cast me in the role of a dialog-free spear-carrier. More precisely, a gun-, baton-, and tear-gas-carrying riot cop.

Riot police, in  Peter Pan?

Glad you asked.

Stuart was doing a site-specific adaptation of the J.M. Barrie classic. Specifically, it embodied the sex, drugs, rock&roll and political upheaval going down in Madison. Peaceful anti-war demonstrations on the campus had been attacked by the city police. Some of the students fought back, so what were essentially police riots were dubbed student riots. Several continued for days, ending only when the governor called out the national guard to get between the cops and the students, not to mention get between the cops and the taxpayer-funded campus before they wrecked the place.

Therefore, Peter Pan was now a free-spirited hippie dude. His sidekick, Tinkerbell, was a hairy guy in a fringed leather shirt who dealt acid—I mean dispensed fairy dust, which sent Wendy and her brothers on a trip to Neverland, where the Lost Boys were a commune of semi-feral teens, the Indians were African-American Black Power radicals, and Captain Hook wasn't a pirate, he was a cop, as were his men, who wore leather jackets, helmets and aviator shades.

The trip Peter, Tink, Wendy and her brothers took to Neverland consisted of a heavy-duty light show. The set and everyone on it were covered with deeply colored stage lights, pulsing oil projections, blacklights, strobes and a movie of flowing lava, accompanied by In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida played at brain-mulching volume.

And, center stage, waiting to greet Peter and Wendy, was Stuart's Big Allegorical Move: six naked female dancers. They symbolized, he explained, innocence.

Later, after the first dust-up between the Lost Boys and the cops, the women danced again—this time in tights, nude only from the waist up, to symbolize compromised innocence.

Then, after Peter shoots and kills Hook—these were turbulent times, man—they symbolized the loss of innocence by dancing fully clothed, with fright wigs and monster make-up. Though, if I remember correctly, they wore leotards with no bras. As did a good portion of our audience.

Ah, our audience. The previous semester Stuart had done a fantastically creative, hilarious and disturbing comedy that was a huge hit. So when the 420 tickets for his Peter Pan were released—the Union gave them away free—they were gone in an hour.

When we arrived for a combined dress/tech rehearsal on the Monday afternoon before our Monday night opening, the theater's lobby was packed with students who couldn't get tickets, imploring Stuart to let them attend the rehearsal. He agreed, but asked them to wait while we got set up.

At that point I was collared by one of the students—a photographer I knew from the student newspaper, for which I wrote. He asked if we would let him in early, get him a front row seat, and permit him take pictures. He promised to provide free copies to the cast—an offer Stuart agreed to, as this show had no budget for production photos, and none of us had snapped a single shot during rehearsals.

So we did the dress/tech in front of a full house, and despite the usual glitches requiring stops and starts to get the equipment and the actors coordinated, it worked. The audience left happy and we got busy with the usual frantic last-minute fixes for the official opening.

That went even better. Big fun, standing ovation. But no big opening night party. We were exhausted from rehearsing and building the show, and had to be back at the theater by noon. After going to morning classes.

I hadn't told anyone in the cast this was also my birthday. But when I got back to my apartment, one of my roommates eagerly led me to the kitchen, where, despite being high and munchy, he hadn't cut into any of the three birthday cakes sitting on the kitchen table. They'd been baked by four women I was seeing; two were roommates who collaborated on cake #3.

Age of Aquarius, my ass. It was the Age of Dionysos, Mars, Dionysos, Apollo and Dionysos.

The next morning it morphed into the Age of Kafka & Fellini. I had no idea my photographer pal was also a stringer for AP and UPI. He'd been supplying them with shots of massive anti-war demonstrations. This time he'd sent photos of our little show; mainly, for some reason, shots of the totally nude dance number.

The wire services had distributed them globally; they'd been all over European newspapers and TV, and during the day began to appear in the American media.

When we finished the matinee we were greeted by reporters, cameras, and breaking news. Madison's District Attorney had issued a statement: if we did our third and final performance we'd be busted on indecent exposure charges.

A recent Supreme Court decision had rendered such laws unconstitutional in cases where the work had artistic and/or socially redeeming value. A prosecution would fail, or if it succeeded, would be overturned on appeal. But the DA was a Republican who was up for re-election in a month. This was about political exposure, not nipple and genital exposure.

And yet the university locked us out of the Play Circle so we couldn't do our final performance.

So we broke in.

So the school pulled the fuses.

So we lit some candles and occupied the theater.

So a deal was struck. If we left the theater, we'd be allowed to return and do a matinee for a tiny audience: the DA, the Chief of Police, and three theater professors. After the show the five would share their professional assessments of the play's socially redeeming allegorical nipples and genitals.

In the meantime, the story surged way off the charts; Johnny Carson was cracking jokes about us on The Tonight Show.

So the next afternoon we took the stage, with the three professors sitting on one side of the theater, the DA and Police Chief on the other. When we finished, the professors went to the center aisle and waited to discuss things with the law enforcement officials.

The law enforcement officials brushed by them without a word and marched straight to the lobby—which was jammed with a mob of reporters, TV cameramen and still photographers large enough to cover an actual national emergency.

The DA pulled out and read a typed statement, about how after witnessing and evaluating a performance of Peter Pan,  it was in his opinion obscene, and any further showing would meet with the full wrath of the law.

Our first instinct was to commandeer the theater and do our final performance—but that was a non-starter, what with the school able to cut off the electricity.

However… a student film society, which had two movie screenings scheduled for the next night, offered to let us use the room they were in—a six-hundred-seat lecture hall. Both showings were sold out, so we'd do two performances—to a total audience of 1,200.

The thing was, after the DA's threat, half of the cast dropped out. Every actor and dancer had gotten calls from their parents. Damn few—if memory serves, the exact number was zero—were supportive.

Dire measures were necessary. I was promoted to the role of Second Mate Smee, which entailed me inflicting dialog on an audience.

On the other hand, one of the involuntary accommodations improved the show. Two of the Lost Boys were twins who constantly squabbled. One of the twins dropped out. So the remaining actor played both brothers, as one schizophrenic who argued with himself. It was a ton funnier.

The serious problem was the dancers—there were only two left. The choreography looked like crap. It might work with three, but there was no time to rehearse in a new dancer—not that any women were volunteering.

André De Shields volunteered. He was playing the leader of the Black Pantherish faction. André was—still is—a brilliant actor, singer and dancer. And willing to work nude. But, after some thought, Stuart chose to have André wear a dance belt, just enough fabric to cover his privates. Stuart knew there'd be cops in the audience, and in those days, even that far north, a black guy swinging free between two naked white women might press bad buttons. He didn't want the show stopped, perhaps violently, less than halfway through. Followed by pornography and sex trafficking charges.

So we went ahead with our semi-defiant closing night of Peter Pan—on a very narrow lecture hall stage, which flattened our movement, so it had a sort of two-dimensional shadow-puppet quality. No matter; it got roaring responses. One of which we discouraged, when a student jumped to his feet and shouted, "Let's all take off our clothes in solidarity!" What a social activist considers solidarity, us theater sluts consider upstaging.

Speaking of clothes, the undercover cops in the house were easy to spot. There were like 596 long-haired college kids in tie-dye, bellbottoms and India-print dresses, along with four chunky adult men with crew cuts, wearing chinos and windbreakers, which they kept zipped up in an attempt to conceal the holsters that were bulging under the jackets' elastic waistbands.

On the far right side of the lecture stage there was a door that led directly to the campus outside. After our final curtain call we all—in full make-up and costume—ran out the door and fled into the night.

The DA issued warrants for Stuart and the two female dancers. They only had the name of one—Carolyn Purdy, Stuart's girlfriend. The other was a Jane Doe warrant. They never caught her.

Stuart and Carolyn hid out for a few days, hired a lawyer and turned themselves in.

The DA was re-elected and dropped the charges.

Stuart and Carolyn got married, started a successful theater company in Chicago, and raised three terrific daughters.

In 2007, André De Shields was nominated for a Tony for his performance in the original Broadway production of The Full Monty.

Lenny Kleinfeld

Guest Author, Lenny Kleinfeld: Forget it, Jake, It's Malibu

Our guest author today is the incomparable Lenny Kleinfeld.  If you’re not familiar with Lenny's work you’re missing something really special.  Make that really hysterically special.  Lenny’s first novel, “Shooters And Chasers,” is one of the funniest crime novels I ever read.  His recently completed second, “Some Dead Genius”—the manuscript of which Leighton and I were privileged to read—is the funniest.  As Lenny puts it, the exact date “Some Dead Genius” will be inflicted on the public has yet to be determined. Lenny began his career as a playwright, columnist and freelance writer in Chicago. Then he sold a screenplay. He is currently 27 years into a business trip to Los Angeles. 

—Jeff

A few weeks ago Jeff wrote about an elderly couple on Mykonos being hassled by a rent-a-cop, for allegedly trespassing a private sightline because they were looking at the sea, over a privately owned seawall.

Ha.

For the past forty years, people attempting to walk or sit on public beaches in Malibu have been hassled by wealthy beachfront homeowners and their rent-a-cops, some of whom are motorized infantry.

Malibu Private Patrol

Which is, what's the word, illegal.

And we're not even talking about giving the public access to the whole width of the beach. By law, the easements for these shoreline properties give the homeowners privacy rights on the sand above the high tide line. The rabble—anybody who can't afford to shell out twenty, thirty, forty million or more to build a weekend getaway—are only entitled to sully the damp part of the beach. Yet for many Malibu homeowners that's an intolerable intrusion, even if it is, what's the word, legal.

Tide Lines

Plus which many of those same building permits require homeowners to provide access from the road out front—the Pacific Coast Highway—to the beaches. But a significant number have ignored that requirement. Most famously, multimedia mogul David Geffen.

He signed an agreement in 1983 to build a vertical easement—an accessway to the beach—in exchange for a permit to build a swimming pool. After the pool was completed Geffen filed a lawsuit challenging the requirement.

A mere twenty-two years of bad publicity later, Geffen backed down; the gates to the accessway were opened in 2005. Part of the bad publicity had been a series of Doonesbury comic strips, in which the resident stoner/surfer Zonker participated in demonstrations to liberate the beaches (below the high tide line). When the matter was finally resolved, this victory strip appeared:

Zonker-Malibu

Later, in real life, a beach accessway near the Malibu Pier was consecrated in Zonk's fictional honor.

Zonker Map

Geffen, though, is hardly alone in his attempts to assert sovereignty over a slice of the Pacific shore. California Coastal Commission guidelines call for an accessway every 1000 feet. In Malibu, that works out to 105 passages. Right now there are 17. Since 1973, homeowners have signed 29 agreements to provide vertical easements on their property. Nine have opened. Twenty remain neck-deep in lawsuit quicksand.

But wait, there's more. Various beachfront residents, even some whose properties contain vertical easements, try to make using them as difficult as possible, through a combination of locked gates, camouflage and mendacity. Not just about the beach access, but about public parking spaces that have mysteriously sprouted NO PARKING signs, or been barricaded by orange traffic cones like those used by road crews. And my favorite: fake driveways, to fool motorists into thinking that parking in front of them is verboten.

Malibu Scams

But this summer a digital Joan of Arc has ridden to the rescue. Or as the locals know her, Jenny of Venice. Well, originally of St. Louis.

Jenny Price is an environmental scholar/journalist (she has something called a PhD, from someplace called Yale), who's written extensively about Malibu Beach Imperialism. And now she's become a political apptivist.

Jenny Price

She joined forces with a firm called Escape Apps. They mounted a Kickstarter campaign that raised thirty thousand dollars, which they're using to create Our Malibu Beaches, an app that will be given away free all this summer.

Our Malibu Beaches is a guide to all the legal ways to get to the legally public beach—and a guide to all the illegal scams which can be legally ignored.

So if you're going to San Francisco be sure to wear a flower in your hair, and bring a fully loaded wallet, that town is pricey. If you're going to Los  Angeles be sure to load Jenny's Malibu beach app in your phone, if you're in the mood to insert yourself into some billionaire's vertical easement.

--Lenny

Guest Blogger Lenny Kleinfeld

Our guest author this week is Lenny Kleinfeld.
Lenny started out as a playwright, working in Chicago.
His articles have appeared in Chicago Magazine, Playboy, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.
And now he's written an absolutely delightful crime novel he calls Shooters & Chasers.
If you haven't read it - get it.
Lenny's subject for today is:

Coincidence

The use of coincidence in fiction is a big no-no. Just plain tacky.

            To which I respectfully say: Bullshit.

First, like any technique, it can come off brilliant or brain-dead, depending on the skill with which its deployed. Second, coincidences happen all the time. At least in my life.

As in this 100% true chain of coincidence stretching over forty years:

            In the mid-1960s my wife, Ina, attended New Trier High School in the Chicago suburbs. She dated a guy named Mark Estrin.

            In 1969 Ina made the mistake of marrying me.

            In 1986 I sold a screenplay and made the mistake of believing people who told me I had to be in Los Angeles.            

            In L.A. I hung out a bit with a wealthy guy named Dan. He's a Dodgers fan, I'm a Cubs fan. We went to games when Los Cubbies were in town.

            In 1987 Dan called and said he'd been at a charity auction and bought lunch for four with Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda. Did I want to go?

When I got to the restaurant, one of Dan's other guests sat down next to me and introduced himself.

            "Mark Estrin."

            Pause. "Did you go to New Trier High School?"

            Another pause. "How did you know?"

            "I married Ina Jaffe."

            Mark had come to L.A. to write TV movies. His career hit the wall and he became a wine salesman. Dan was his best customer.

            In 2003 my career hit the wall and I started writing my first novel, Shooters And Chasers, which has a subplot about winemaking.

            By this time Mark and a different wealthy customer of his had started making wine, at a co-op wine facility in Santa Barbara County Their mini-boutique label, Red Car, was an instant success.

            Mark became one of the wine advisors on my novel.

            One day Mark was excited because Red Car had bought what he believed were the best wine barrels in the world: Gamba barrels, French oak crafted by Italian coopers.

            The Gamba barrels went into the book.

            In 2004 my agent submitted Shooters to all the majors. It didn't sell.

Mark was stricken with brain cancer. He asked to read Shooters. I told him if he wanted to read the book he'd have to survive until I could hand him a published hardcover copy. When it became apparent he wasn't going to keep his end of the deal, I dropped off a manuscript at the hospital.

Mark plowed through it in one night. Best review it'll ever get.

            That same year, the movie Sideways came out.

It was set in wineries in Santa Barbara County.

            When it became a hit, Ina—a reformed actor who'd become an NPR correspondent—went up there to do a story on how Sideways effected business for the wineries and restaurants featured in it.

            Ina hit it off with Karen Steinwachs, a woman who worked at Fiddlehead Winery. Karen was disappointed that Ina wasn't tasting any of the wines (because she was working). Karen invited Ina to stop by and taste Fiddlehead's stuff if she ever got back that way.

            A year later we were driving up the coast. Ina called Karen. Karen said she'd be out of town, but she'd leave the keys to Fiddlehead with their next door neighbor.

That turned out to be Steve Clifton, partner in the high-end, low-volume Brewer-Clifton label. Steve had also started Palmina, a line of moderately-priced Italian varietals.

            Steve asked us if we wanted to taste some of his wines before we went to Fiddlehead. Twist our arms, why dontcha.

            After about an hour spent going through all of the Palminas, and a couple of Brewer-Cliftons, Steve asked if we wanted to go backstage and taste a sample from one of his tanks. Twist our arms again.

            While we were in the winery, I leaned on a wine barrel. Looked down at it. The logo on the side said Gamba.

            "You have Gamba barrels!" I exclaimed.

            Steve nodded. Said he'd bought them from some friends who had a company called Red Car.

            I was leaning on Mark's barrels. I was leaning on the barrels that were the props in a scene in my book.

            Wait, as the late-night philosophers say, there's more.

The other wine advisor on that book was a guy named Chip Hammack, a good friend from Chicago who'd also slid down the continent into Los Angeles in the 1980s. 

 

Chip and Mark ended up working in the same wine store in L.A., and became close. Chip spoke at Mark's funeral.

            Last year, when Shooters finally got published, Chip contracted stomach cancer. Passed away last September.

            Moral #1: Coincidences are pure naturalism.

            Moral #2: Never be a wine advisor on one of my books. It's one of the most dangerous jobs in showbiz.

            Or maybe it's just one of those tacky literary coincidences.

Posted by Leighton, for Lenny - Thursday